A friend asked me to repair a very old and damaged family photo from the civil war era. Gimp was the obvious choice. Here are the before and after images..

Before


After


It's not perfect but it turned out pretty good, considering what I had to work with.

It took around 3 hours to get this far with a raw repair. I had to do a lot of close up work by hand because there was so much missing. There were some tricky parts, like the face and the missing patterns table cloth he was leaning on. I wish I had a graphics tablet.

Here's the final image, where I tried to enhance and smooth out the background a bit but I couldn't spend too much time on the project.



My friend was pleased with the results so I was happy.

you did a very admirable job with that. It looks like an old photo and it would take a trained eye to see any repairs.

Repairing something that old would make me feel like I was treading on hallowed ground. Excellent job, GnuTux!

WOW is all I can say. That is fantastic....

Outstanding job, no professional service could have done better.

Thanks!! It was fun doing it. I'll bet some money could be made doing this kind of thing by putting an ad in the paper. It might get tedious tho.

Alas, I could have made a lot of money from what I know, instead I have 35 years of experience and mot much to show for it. I guess my priorities were in a different place.

I would have done the face and give up after 30 minutes. You repaired that practically perfect. The table cloth must have been hard.

I've done a couple for people, and I must say you did a pro job on it! Excellent work!

Isn't it cool all the things one can do with GIMP?

Fantastic job GnuTux!
Very professional work in my opinion. =)

No need to restore old threads eh?

Have you checked this thread out?

viewtopic.php?f=18&t=1159

There are also several tutorials on the internet that might help.
here
and here

You did a very good job bro!

I saw that one before Tux. How you ever did that paisley cloth is a miracle. Very professional.

I agree. It must have taken hours to repair that.

Thanks for the kudos, friends.


I see others have already pointed you in the right direction. My technique was to copy and paste good sections over bad sections, wherever I could. I would then zoom in and blend those new sections sections as best I could. Those operations were made easier by using tools like clone , smudge , blur and airbrush . Sometimes, it's a matter of zooming way in and rebuilding the image, almost on a pixel by pixel basis.

The face and pattens on the table cloth were the most tricky to repair and yes, it was very time consuming. Although, you get faster as you go.

I have little to no patience for restoration but admire the work of those that do and your's is fantastic Tux. Only did one several years ago for my Mom's friend and, though the result looked alright, I said to myself, Self; you are a filter guy, and kept to that theme since. lol

Kudos again Tux.

go cat go, Mr. Filter Guy..